Think of the many awkward attempts we’ve made over the years to represent ourselves — the coerced approaches and content, the alien languages, the unintended genericism and mimicked desires, the painful (to our present selves) pretensions and flat-out bullshit. I find it hard not to be ashamed of these past efforts, even though I’m still figuring out then and now. They’ve become a kind of internal evidence of prior submissions, the dangers of naiveté and ignorance, our base egotism and compliance with the way things have been, a siding with privilege that we’d rather forget.

It’s the only good kind of shame I can’t think of given our current state of being. It’s made us accept what we are (even if we’re still figuring out what that might be). It’s the only kind of shame that matters. All others reflect the false. We don’t expect each moment to be momentous anymore. We don’t assume to be inherently dignified, to possess interesting hobbies or rarified knowledge, to be simultaneously reflective, active, kind, shrewd, special, common, calculating, spontaneous, hip, eccentric, revolutionary, counter-revolutionary, wealthy and charitable. Being poor is not a crime. There’s no weakness in refusing to compete. There’s no need to be affirmed, recognized or lauded – we’re all proof of this — but it can still be so difficult, perhaps even distressing, to get rid of a terrible longing for such things. Stay strong. You can’t help but do what’s right. That’s why you’re here. Appreciate where your moral compass has led you. Imagine what can still be lived with the time that’s left. Yes, I’m writing here to myself as much as I am to you.

We are as precious, as precarious, as liquid water in the universe. Without us there’s no life. Our existence depends on a limited, particular relationship to the sun. We’re not supposed to submerge what’s beyond us. We must seek each other out, get out of our containers and find the river. If success can and should mean anything, I suspect it has to do with a washing away of our atomization and the beginnings of something else together. We are trying, sometimes despite ourselves, to join the sea. We need to make each other happy.